Final Exam Quotes

“I do, however, struggle to reconcile what medicine has taught me so well with the very reasons that drew me to it in the first place. I want to cry for those in whose bellies I find disseminated tumors, but cannot for fear of being unable to see clearly enough to sew them closed. I want to sit and linger with my patients, but know that such inefficiency would never work in the clinical world. I want to be able to soothe my patients' suffering without the burden of knowing the inexorable future of their diseases.”
― Pauline W. Chen, Final Exam: A Surgeon's Reflections on Mortality

“Aoun wrote of the search for 'that good physician who would say, 'I understand that this illness is happening to you, but we will face it together.”
― Pauline W. Chen, Final Exam: A Surgeon's Reflections on Mortality